A non-partisan political blog for people who care about Israel and want an end to the Arab-Muslim war against the Jews in the Middle East. Michael Lumish, PhD, editor. - mike.lumish@gmail.com - Doodad, Oldschooltwentysix, JayinPhiladelphia, Empress Trudy, Geoffff, and Sar Shalom Contributors.

­Work on the Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina, is planned to start as soon as
the annual Hajj pilgrimage comes to a close at the end of November.

After the reconstruction, the mosque is expected to become the world’s largest building, with a capacity for 1.6 million people.

And while the need to expand does exist as more pilgrims are flocking to
holy sites every year, nothing has been said on how the project will
affect the surroundings of the mosque, also historic sites.

Concerns are growing that the expansion of Masjid an-Nabawi will come at
the price of three of the world’s oldest mosques nearby, which hold the
tombs of Prophet Mohammed and two of his closest companions, Abu Bakr
and Umar. The expansion project which will cost 25 billion SAR (more
than US $6 billion) reportedly requires razing holy sites, as old as the
seventh century. [...]

But to build this tourist attraction the Saudi authorities destroyed the Ottoman era Ajyad Fortress and the hill it stood on.

The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimated that 95 percent of sacred sites and shrines in the two cities have been destroyed in the past twenty years.

Money quote:

The Prophet’s birthplace was turned into a library and the house of
his first wife, Khadijah, was replaced with a public toilet block.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Israeli Jews prefer Republican candidate Mitt Romney over US President Barack Obama by an almost 3:1 margin, according to a "Peace Index" poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University that was released Sunday.

The polling figures stand in stark contrast to polls taken of American Jews, which show they prefer Obama by a similarly wide margin. An American Jewish Committee poll at the end of September showed US Jews favoring Obama over Romney 63%-27%.

I will stand with my fellow Jews in Israel before I will stand with this friend of political Islam.

Obama : Sorry . Damn That Blasted Video To Hell.

geoffffI don't get it. Could this be true?

I saw this a few days ago but it was at a place that made me think it was just campaign noise as shrill as it gets. But now I think it could be true. This is what I don't get.
How come in the world's most free, liberal and important democracy less than a fortnight before her people's most important decision this century is this story not everywhere?

This should be the biggest Democrat presidential campaign derailment since George McGovern's running mate was caught hanging upside down in his pyjamas from a tree and baying at a herd of cows at midnight while sober just ten days out from polling day. Or something. Surely?

In fact it is worse than that.

This is the story.

On September 11 the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi is attacked and four Americans are killed including the Ambassador. The carefully planned attack lasts four hours and is monitored from Washington DC from the first shot. The premeditated attack could only be the work of the Al Qaeda network. Al Qaeda are not the only Islamist Nazi revolutionaries in the world by any means but they do have a certain style.

For these inheritors of Nazi jihad insurgency this is a war of symbols and they seem to know what works. They just murdered an US ambassador on September 11 just to show they could. The US for all its power could not stop it.. Instead this US administration sought to brush it off as over righteous blast back from some dumb U Tube upload.

This is not our fault they said while they sat around for hours and watched their own officials butchered because they represent the US and the West and modernity and all that is hateful for these medieval revolutionaries from hell. Blame it on the video. .A terrible offence to Islam. Blame it on anything. Blame it on the bossa nova. Blame it on Western values. Our fault really for allowing the offence. We have not appeased militant and political Islam enough.

Blame it on the Coptic Christian. It does not matter. Everybody knows they will blame it on the Jews .

This Administration allowed this outrage to be mixed up with some stupid video that proved only how stupid, puerile and dangerous the extremist religion mind can get when left to fester unchallenged. We saw it in our streets and around the world and so they apologised.for the offence. Freedom of expression. Sorry guys. Arrest that man in the night. Will do better next time.

But there has been no apology for not being able to save these American officials in harm's way and now it gets worse.

... far more devastating evidence has emerged that not only did he indeed know from the start it was a premeditated attack, but that for several hours after it started the White House refused to answer desperate pleas for help by American forces trying to defend the consulate – and who died as a result.

Despite CIA denials, Fox News reports that that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command -- who also told the CIA operators twice to ‘stand down’ rather than help the ambassador’s team.

‘Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.”

‘Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The rescue team from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.

‘At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied... The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours -- enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators.

‘A Special Operations team, or CIF which stands for Commanders in Extremis Force, operating in Central Europe had been moved to Sigonella, Italy, but they were never told to deploy. In fact, a Pentagon official says there were never any requests to deploy assets from outside the country. A second force that specializes in counterterrorism rescues was on hand at Sigonella, according to senior military and intelligence sources. According to those sources, they could have flown to Benghazi in less than two hours.’

There’s a heart-breaking interview with Ty Woods’s father here. And just look here at the crass vulgarity with which Vice-President Biden apparently addressed this bereaved father.

If they were taken alive and held as hostages they would have been more important for certain than as mere Americans in harm's way. That would have played to the electorate for sure in one way or another. Would they have been worth a rescue mission then?

This administration does not deserve to survive. There is no evidence they recognise the true nature of the enemy. The transition must come soon.

Update

Shirl has provided links in comments here to pieces just put up in Frontpagemag.com that I thought were worth another post at Geoffff's Joint.

geoffffThis thing does not pass the nose test. We don't have the detail and naturally the Obama administration will do what it can to keep the lid on until after Melbourne Cup day but like a dodgy tax arrangement with too many loose ends --- it just smells.

Did the State Department pull an operation already in play to get support to Americans under siege on American soil because the "symbol" of US special forces arriving on the scene would be out of sync with its policy of appeasement of political Islam? Or for some other political reason however they choose to explain it?

What is this to be? If indeed that did happen then even if Obama is still in the White House next year why would that not be grounds for impeachment?

When a US president abandons an ambassador and staff to the enemy because to mount an effective response will jeopardise whatever his Secretary of State is cooking up -- appeasement wise -- with some faction of the enemy -- or whatever -- then he has abandoned more than the lives of a few brave Americans doing their jobs in a dangerous place. This is no ordinary mistake of judgement..

This is a grave error of policy and principle.

The seeds of Watergate were in the public arena before Nixon was re elected.

Ambassador Stevens and the others were attacked because they are a symbol and you can be certain this victory is being celebrated by the enemy and those who share its vile ideology way beyond just Libya and the Middle East. The defeat will be compounded if the Benghazi outpost is closed but in this bloody war of symbols that seems likely.

To have sent in the marines. Or the cavalry. The guys who took out two holes. Whoever. That was the symbol that was most urgently called for in this war. Its absence is a terrible message to the enemy. It tells them they are winning.

The worst symbol of all would be an US president who abandoned these souls to their fate even if that was because those were the policy settings in place while he and the others were on the campaign. Not on the job. Is that possible? Maybe I'm naive but that would not happen on West Wing.

This is exactly the thing that inspires the enemy. This is what they celebrate. The hated West on the recoil from this blow from jihadist Islam. The spitting contempt for democratic process would be just the fizz in their champagne.

This is why the appeasement of hateful murderous men inspired to every fibre by a hateful murderous ideology is so very very wrong.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Time for some Tom Lehrer who is an old favourite of Che Gorilla. He is concerned about that because he thinks it means he risks cult status. He didn't say who ran the risk.

Tom Lehrer was a mathematician who graduated with high honours from Harvard at age nineteen had a distinguished academic career did something mysterious for the National Security Agency in the mid fifties while serving in the US Army as a corporal and then became famous as a singer/song writer satirist before getting bored with it all at about the same time as the sixties counter culture got radical..

I doubt many have heard of him now at least outside of the US. He does seem to evoke a distant age.

It would have been towards the end of his musical career when he wrote and performed this.

From his introduction Lehrer probably wrote the song in 1964 not long after the event depicted here. You can get a taste of the political climate of the time in under five minutes from just these two videos

Taste familiar?

It does if you are of a certain age.

Like a shit sandwich. Trust me with this.

Nuclear weapons are scary at the very best of times but they get a lot scarier when they are in a world where the chances of them being used are excellent. This should not be too difficult to understand.

The world was probably over the very worst of the nuclear war threat by 1964 but Red China was still not a nice place closer in tone to modern North Korea than modern China which is still not a very nice place but a damn sight better than it was which was still better than the Soviet Union at its worst however none of them are as bad as modern Iran. Only Nazi Germany which the Iranian regime openly admires and publicly seeks to emulate is as bad as modern Iran. Arguably Iran is worse.

There will be a special place in the chronicles of human evil when the horror of political Islam finally passes from the world for the way these men treat women. We are in the presence of the worst human rights outrage of our time and hardly a whisper from the left/liberal left. Nothing at all from the antizionist left. Not a single word.

Countries like Iran are at permanent war with themselves and with the outside because that is the way these men rule. Iran has not seen a day of peace since the Islamic Revolution and the Iranian people will not be allowed a day of peace until they are eventually able to free themselves from these vile men.

That is just one more reason why these these tormentors of the Iranian people must never have this weapon.

Dramatic development: Nearly six months after shocking the political system by forming a unity government with Kadima, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has thrown another curve ball and joined forces with Avigdor Lieberman ahead of the upcoming elections.

In a press conference held Thursday evening, the two men announced they were uniting the Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu under one ticket.

Well, this is certainly interesting and from what I can tell at the moment reactions are all over the board. The progressive-left is, of course, going to scream bloody murder that Israel is going fascist. The hard right will argue that this is a sell-out because both parties favor a two state solution. And both will contend that the whole thing is corrupt political gamesmanship for electoral reasons.

All I can really say is that I am not the least bit surprised that the mainstream Israeli right is coming together because the Israeli left, like the left, in general, has shown itself either hostile to Israel or "morbidly naive," as my editor at the Times of Israel put it in an intro to one of my articles.

Speaking strictly for myself, I feel no particular need to rush into judgment on this.

All that I know for certain is that the left refuses to recognize the failure of the Oslo peace process, blames their fellow Jews for Palestinian refusal to accept a state for themselves in peace next to Israel, and in the United States, supports a president who helped bring a genocidally anti-Semitic organization into power in the much larger neighboring state of Egypt.

So naturally the mainstream Israeli right is consolidating power and the Israeli left has gotten decimated.

"I'm not sure what the author’s intentions were in putting this 3-minute musical/cartoon/video together but it is certainly helpful in terms of the big picture – in terms of giving us an historical perspective as to who owns the land of Israel/Palestine.

"It is curious, I think, that most Jews who claim ownership of the land do so on religious grounds (‘God gave us this land’, etc.) whereas the Torah itself makes clear that no one but God Himself owns it.

"‘The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants.” (Leviticus 25:23)

"Be Sociable, Share!"

...

Sure thing Roy. Like herpes.

This is a case of Christian antisemitism pretty much as clear as it gets in public. It is chilling that it is so loose and casual. You can be certain it gets worse when they think no one is listening. .

The Anglican Church would likely own more property world wide than the State of Israel several times over. Father Roy's theological reach would impress if he applied his idea of God given property law to Church land so as to divest the Church of lawful occupancy in the eyes of man..

Or anyone else. Any other state, country, company, organisation, religion, people or person.

He can not of course. He has been careful about this. This is a theology that applies only to the Jews. "Most of them" because this is what the Jews believe themselves in what is their only claim to the land. Their own religious texts and traditions.As if legal ownership means nothing. As if the State of Israel means nothing. As if the law means nothing at all. As if even the existence of Jewish texts from and about the land a thousand years and more before there was Christianity and another thousand years before Islam some how in some mystical religious way dissolve the legal rights of modern Jews and the very legitimacy of the modern Jewish state like salt in water.

Only the Jews. Especially not Muslims. Only the State of Israel. Especially not "Palestine".

Father Roy will swear on his bible that he is not an antisemite. Perhaps that's the problem.

The video is pretty cool however.

Poignant in an angel of death sort of way. Owes a fair bit to South Park I think.

Hate to quibble with a cartoon especially one that has done so much work on getting its history right ( the guy with the hammer is right on the nail) but ...

...the British showing up in tanks and guns and blasting the out of Arabs carrying swords is by any stretch not really a fair artistic portrayal of the First World War, and the capture of the region by the British and allies including the Jewish Legion from Turkish and German forces, in a war that Arabs were noteworthy mainly for their neutrality. To put it charitably.

The usual dose of moral equivalence of course. It is so standard a part of the landscape whatever the medium that you hardly notice it. It would be striking without it. Perhaps Chomsky is the angel of death. I thought I noticed a resemblance.

My comment on this antsemitc site
...

It really is a serious misstatement of truth that "most Jews who claim ownership of the land do so on religious grounds".Ignorance this profound has no excuse. Some one can not possibly make this claim in good faith in 2012. It is a symptom of moral ambivalence about even the most basic of human rights.Only a bigot of the worst kind would seek to deny Israel's legitimacy on any grounds but especially on religious grounds. It seems to me that is exactly what you do. It is quite sinister.Your religious beliefs have crossed a barrier of ordinary decency. You need to look into your soul.Geoffff's Joint Bar and Grill

Father Roy and the other guardians of Christian moral standard at Palestine and Israel (with the merged flag logo) declined to publish the comment.

What a surprise.

It's probably the rudest thing that's ever been said to them.

These guys are in mind lock down. They just don't get it. They are in an unfortunate pocket of the extremist religious mind that allows them to see the world as if they are wandering a carnival maze full of trick mirrors where "Palestine" looms huge, Syria hardly at all and the humans rights of women and minorities in Muslim lands including even Christians are all fat and skinny and distorted. Comical and grotesque. Look away. Quick.

Stalin famously had his "useful idiots" as he cheerfully called them after an audience while drinking with his henchmen vassals later. One of these has already popped up here. The Red Dean of Canterbury. . You can see Stalin half full of vodka roaring with laughter now.

There is no excuse for the Red Dean but at least he could pass for English eccentricity. Orwell had cruelly referred to the Church of England as the Tory Party at prayer. One idiot it could spare.

How many idiots are there now?

It really is the most extraordinary thing. Christians clerics as far away as Sydney who have committed themselves to an impossible and monstrous struggle against the Jews of the Middle East and against all Jews that can only lead to violence and never-ending war .

This struggle they support and pray for demands the unthinkable. It means surrendering everything. It will be fought by every sacrifice as every free man and woman would. You would have to be an antisemite not to see that in an instant.

They demand dhimmitude or death on religious grounds and they have the support of these Christian clerics on religious grounds.There is something in their religious minds that allows them to set aside the earthly secular human rights bestowed by man made law on Jews and Israel as if they never existed. Them and them alone.

It then demands the assimilation of a political culture that refuses assimilation by its very nature. A political culture that is fresh from the Dark Ages in its hateful oppressive misogyny, superstition, intolerance, cruel ignorance, permanent violence, war and barbarism. . Look at it.

Sderot residents and leaders dismissed President Barack Obama's reference to their town on Tuesday, accusing the leader of using them as a campaign tool.

During the final US presidential debate on Monday, Obama alluded to his trip to Sderot as proof of his commitment to the Jewish state, dismissing a jab by Republican challenger Mitt Romney over the president's failure to travel to Israel after being elected.

Israelis don't much like Barack Obama because they see more clearly than anyone else the ways in which Obama has lied to them and how he has made their neighborhood a considerably more dangerous place than it was before.

It's fascinating to me the ways in which "progressive" Jews, who allegedly support Israel, will justify virtually anything the guy says or does up to, and including, helping to put a genocidally anti-Semitic organization into power in Egypt.

One need not wonder how it was that German Jews marched so dutifully into the camps because we can see a similar dynamic at work in the American Jewish community. They're not going to march into any death camps, obviously... although I certainly believe that under the right circumstances they would... but they will pull the lever for the least friendly president toward the Jewish people and the Jewish state in American history, with the possible lone exception of Jimmy Carter.

There is no other ethnic minority in the United States that has so little self-respect that it would support a politician who holds them in such obvious contempt, a politician that whispers sweet nothings while stabbing us directly in the back.

Thank G-d for the Israelis because they have a sense of Jewish self-defense, an unflinching sense of Jewish pride, and they know a thing or two about the long history of Jewish abuse under the heal of Arab-Muslim imperialism.

"Progressive" American Jewry, for the most part, couldn't care less and is fully prepared, in their well-meaning myopia, to sell Israel straight down the river.

Almost invariably there are parts of the population that accept the indictments of the besiegers in the hope that they can win relief and peace. This is a psychological response to being besieged, and Jews have been besieged for 2000 years. As Max Nordau wrote over a hundred years ago, the greatest success of the anti-Semites was that they had gotten the Jews to see themselves through anti-Semitic eyes.

In the comments, some have made it clear that they find references to Jewish dhimmitude to be offensive and not reflective of anything that resembles reality. It has been suggested that the tradition of Islamic dhimmitude is not operative in the west, or in Israel, and therefore it is neither fair, nor correct, to use that term in regards Jewish people today, whether Israeli or diaspora.

I disagree.

Jewish dhimmitude is alive and well and takes the form of Jews who have incorporated elements of the “Palestinian narrative” into their
understanding of the long Arab war against us. “Dhimmi” as we use that word in its contemporary context does not only mean a non-Muslim ”Person of the Book” with “protected” and inferior status within a Muslim culture, but someone who has incorporated the viewpoints of one’s traditional persecutors into the way one views one’s own people. If as a Jewish person you honestly tend to think that the Jews are primarily responsible for Arab hostility toward us then you represent a measure of Jewish dhimmitude.

Most Jews, I suspect, have it in some degree. I certainly did and probably still do, to some extent. For many years I was entirely convinced that the reason that Palestinians sometimes strapped bombs onto Palestinian youngsters, for the purpose of murdering as many Jews as possible, was because I believed in much of the Palestinian-Arab narrative of never-ending Israeli guilt. As a liberal American Jewish guy raised in the wake of the Vietnam War my automatic sympathies went with “persecuted people of color.” I always felt a strong sympathy for Israel, but I also thought that Israel was largely guilty in the conflict.

Boy, was I wrong.

The fact of the matter is that Jews suffered under the boot of Islamic imperialism for 13 centuries as second and third-class citizens in the Arab Middle East, true dhimmis. Although dhimmitude varied according to time and place it was never better than was the American Jim Crow South for black people in the early twentieth-century, and usually considerably worse. We were often not allowed to ride horses or build new synagogues or to bathe in public baths. For thirteen centuries we had no recourse to courts and no means of self-defense against an overwhelming majority population that held us in contempt on religious grounds. When we finally freed ourselves, with a little help from World War I, the majority Arab population launched a war against the Jews of the Middle East which continues to this day.

And, yet, Jewish dhimmis feel guilty.

I am sorry, but I do not. When I am in Israel and I see and hear the Hebrew language wherever I go, I feel pride. And when I am in Israel and I see so many young Jewish men and women in uniform and carrying around rifles, I feel anger. I feel anger that we Jews must continue to protect ourselves from a hostile world and I feel anger at the fact that so much of the international left, and it is mainly the left, believes that Israelis are the aggressor when history clearly demonstrates that this is not the case.

And I feel terrific sadness that so many Jewish “progressives” honestly think that the conflict is primarily Israel’s fault and that if only Jewish Israelis would do this, that, or the other, then the local Arabs would finally agree to a country for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one. History has shown us very clearly that this is simply not the case. The Arabs turned down a state for themselves in peace next to Israel with their rejection of the Peel Commission of 1937. Then they rejected UN 181 in November of ’47. {You know the litany, for chrissake.} The famous “3 Nos” of ’67. Arafat’s rejection of Barak’s offer in 2000 and dictator Abbas’s rejection of Olmert’s offer in 2008.

It’s no and no and no and no and no.

Yet the fact of the matter is that very many progressive-left diaspora Jews blame you guys, you Israeli Jews, for never-ending Arab rejection of your supplications for peace. Why? What explains this? Why does so much of the Jewish left continue to condemn, and berate, Jewish Israelis for the behavior of the hostile Arab majority that surrounds you?

I cannot say for sure, but what I can say is that many of them have come to believe some of the very worst accusations that came out of decades of Arab and Soviet propaganda against you are true. Levin suspects that by blaming you they empower themselves. After all, diaspora Jews may have at least some influence over Israeli policy. We clearly have none over the Arab states. If the problem is really pretty much all your fault then maybe we can help by taking the J-Street line and that means forcing you, with the help of Barack Obama, to do this, that, or the other.

But if you are mainly innocent, and if no matter what you do the Arabs will simply not accept Jewish sovereignty on historically Jewish land, it means that we in the diaspora cannot bring peace.

And for many people, particularly Americans you have to understand, a sense of helplessness is simply intolerable.

And that’s why the Jeremy Ben Amis of the world and the J-Streets of the world and the Peter Beinarts of the world blame you for your own persecution.

It gives them a delusional sense of power over the situation. It makes them feel better, because it gives them some feeling of control.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

I'll be spending all day tomorrow at the annual conference of an organization whose food pantry I work with four days a month.

I'm particularly looking forward to the 'nutrition education' session, and being able to learn more about the limitations and logistics involved regarding being able to provide more fresh produce and whole grains to our clients. I have some ideas on this I plan to bring up, but yeah they're going to cost a lot of money. Which we don't have, and which sucks.

A real eye-opener, to say the least.

Anyway.

During my most recent day working there last week, I came across this article during an idle moment and thought it worth sharing.

Brill was tasked with finding a hospital that could perform a life-saving heart operation on a young Iraqi boy. He had a hole in his heart from a birth defect. Several Arab nations offered to perform the operation for a steep price. Israel, she said, would take him immediately and do it for free.

The boy's mother wanted to save his life but feared she would be killed if it was discovered that they'd been in the Jewish state. Brill reassured the mother that it would all be kept secret.

The boy was saved, but Brill later learned that the truth was discovered and his mother was murdered. "To this day, it haunts me," she said as her eyes teared and her voice grew momentarily weak. "Sometimes you make decisions that cost lives and sometimes you make decisions that save lives, and it is just constant in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can't believe that a person would murder a mother for saving her child."

Well clearly, you'd better not ever think of having Jews mend that broken heart in certain parts of the world.

I mean, for example, which self-respecting New Jerseyan wouldn't murder their neighbor who took their child to Pennsylvania for health care. Right? Oh, wait.

Don't call that savagery either, though. That's just a revolutionary spirit. Reminiscent of '76, and all that...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday responded to international criticism of a plan to build 797 homes in Gilo, saying that Israel will continue construction in Jerusalem in the same way that the international community builds in their own individual capitals.

"We place no limits on construction in our capital city," Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting. "Just as they build in London, Paris, Washington and Moscow, we will continue to build in Jerusalem."

Good for Netanyahu!

If I thought for one second that the Palestinians actually wanted a state for themselves in peace next to Israel with the Arab portions of Jerusalem as a capital I might think otherwise, but clearly they do not.

I know that some Jews like the idea of ripping the heart out of Israel in order to feed it to the Arab world out of some pathetic hope that this will placate them, but since the Arabs have proven that they will not leave the Jews of the Middle East in peace it makes no sense to give them any part of the ancient Jewish city for another Arab capital.

When Obama lied to the Jewish people in his AIPAC speech of, I think, 2008, he said that Jerusalem is the ancient capital of Israel and that it must remain undivided.

I wholeheartedly agree. The only difference, of course, is that I am not lying about it.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

The Pakistani girl shot in the head by the Taliban for wanting an education stood up today in a remarkable comeback from her near fatal wound.

Malala Yousufzai also posed for photos in her hospital bed showing her awake and snuggling with a white teddy bear.

"She is doing very well. In fact, she is standing with some help for the first time this morning when I went into see her," said Dr. David Rosser, the medical director of Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England.

"She is communicating very freely, she is writing," he said.

Malala can't speak because she has a tracheotomy tube that was necessary because her airway was swollen by the bullet wound, Rosser said. But the girl the Taliban tried to silence may be able to speak again in a few days.

In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.

This was put together by the Republican Jewish Coalition so it is, pretty much by definition, a work of propaganda.

Nonetheless, it is far less egregious than some other anti-Obama videos that I have come across mainly because it does not insult the intelligence of its audience by overstating its case.

Unless you're an Obama supporter who is entirely in the bag for this president it is certainly worth the ten minutes to give it a look-see because most of what it has to say is, in my opinion, right on the money.

Obama is simply not a friend to the Jewish State of Israel. No president who supports the Muslim Brotherhood, or the rise of political Islam throughout the Middle East, can possibly be such a friend.

This is the satirical piece, written in March 2010, that got me banned from Daily Kos.

At the time they accused me of making fun of the "occupation" when, in fact, I was making fun of them! It got 423 comments, almost all of which were negative, but some people found the piece funny. It was certainly fun to write, anyway.

Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem --- The entire world was shocked yesterday when this reporter revealed that retired electrician, Ehud David Netanyolmert, shook the peace process to its roots by building an illegal second bathroom in his East Jerusalem home.

“This is yet another example of Israeli intransigence,” said Palestinian Authority PM, Mahmoud Abbas. “We cannot negotiate with the Israelis if they insist upon violating international law with the continued building on Palestinian lands. Israel must pressure Mr. Netanyolmert to dismantle the illegal mini-settlement that he has constructed.”

Only slightly taken aback by the world community’s rejection of the second bathroom, Benjamin Netanyahu told the Jerusalem Post, “Israel wants peace and two states for two peoples. The Palestinians need to sit down at the negotiating table and I honestly do not see what some guy's second bathroom has to do with anything.”

In Washington, US President Barack Obama convened an emergency meeting with his cabinet in order to evaluate the situation and to determine the best response to this most recent Israeli aggression. In response to the crisis US diplomat George Mitchell claimed, “Israelis have rights, but so do the Palestinian people. While the United States remains deeply committed to Israeli security, it is entirely unclear how the second bathroom promotes that security or in any way advances the cause of peace.”

When queried about this blatant Zionist violation of international law Mr. Netanyolmert objected to the entire line of enquiry. “You people are meshuganah,” Netanyolmert said while standing in his doorway, wearing his jammies and blinking into the morning sun. “Are you honestly telling me that Vladimir Putin objects to my second bathroom on the grounds that it is an impediment to peace? Vladimir Putin? Really?”

It should be obvious to any reasonable observer that Mr. Netanyolmert’s myopia regarding Zionist aggression, and his willingness to derail the peace process, cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. The Palestinian peace organization, Hamas, therefore responded today with a flurry of Qassam and Katyusha rocket attacks on S’derot and Ashkelon. The typical Israeli myopia extended to former S’derot mayor, Eli Moyal, who, while quivering under his desk, is alleged to have told his secretary, “Second bathroom? What second bathroom? What the hell are these people talking about?”

Meanwhile, a variety of Israeli left-of-center organizations are planning a mass rally in opposition to The Second Bathroom. Naomi Chazan, of the New Israel Fund, said that dozens of people will gather outside Mr. Netanyolmert’s home in solidarity with Palestinian activists in a No Second Bathroom rally. The protestors will carry signs reading, “Get the Hell out of the Bathroom!” and “Netanyolmert, Zionist Criminal Baby Killer!” and “Who Do These Jews Think They Are, Anyway?!”

Some fear that just as Ariel Sharon's stroll on the Temple Mount inevitably caused the Al-Aqsa Intifada, so Mr. Netanyolmert's violation of Palestinian sovereignty might spark a third... The First Second Bathroom Intifada.

One hopes that if the Israeli government makes the necessary concessions by evacuating the bathroom then the Palestinian Authority might be persuaded to sit down for peace talks.

Just curious if you have anything to say about a national co-chair of Arab Americans for Romney having been an attorney for a Hamas-linked group, a fact they were undoubtedly aware of prior to the appointment.

I do, in fact, have a few things to say.

I would say that Reuven's comment represents a deflection of the issue at hand, an attempt at a false moral equivalency, and an attempt at guilt by association four times removed.

Let's take these one by one.

Deflection:

The question that Obama, the Brotherhood, and the American Jewish left raises is just why it is that progressive-left Jewish supporters of Barack Obama would back an American president who is supportive of a genocidally anti-Semitic organization like the Muslim Brotherhood?

Instead of addressing the actual issue, Reuven deflects.

Deflection, btw, is not automatically an unfair tactic if it points to a true double standard. Reuven wants you to believe that I am holding Barack Obama to a double standard. He wants to suggest that if Obama did X then, well, Romney has also done X, gosh darnit! The problem with Reuven's implication of double standard is that he must sneak in a false moral equivalency in order to make it work.

False Moral Equivalency:

The fact of the matter, of course, is that there is not the slightest moral equivalency between promoting the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that now controls Egypt, that has called for the conquest of Jerusalem, and in which high ranking members regularly call for the genocide of the Jews, and the fact that some organization, Arab Americans for Romney, has a co-chair that was a lawyer for the Holy Land Foundation defendants. The degree of guilt of Barack Obama, in this case, is like a ton of bricks compared to Romney's mere whisper of guilt about anything around the issue of political Islam. Reuven is, thus, trying to sell us on the idea that what might be a small mistake for Romney is the moral equivalent of ushering an organization into power in Egypt, a country with ten times Israel's population, that has called for the genocide of the Jews.

That simply will not wash, because it simply makes no sense. The one is not even remotely equivalent to the other. Obama has threatened the well-being of the Jewish people in the Middle East. Romney has not.

Guilt by Association Four Times Removed:

Reuven is trying to smear Romney with an association to Hamas. The problem is that while Obama does, in fact, have an association with the Brotherhood, Hamas's parent organization, Reuven fails to demonstrate any actual Romney association with the Little Brotherhood in the Gaza Strip. Reuven is trying to sell us on the idea that because Romney has an association with Arab Americans for Romney (an organization that doesn't even seem to have so much as a website) and this group has an association with this lawyer and this lawyer has an association with the Holy Land Foundation defendants and the Holy Land Foundation defendants have an association with Hamas, that Romney is thus guilty of something.

Just what he is guilty of is entirely unclear, but if he is guilty of something here, it is not just guilt by association, but guilt by association 4 times removed. 1) Romney's association to the organization. 2) the organization's association with the lawyer. 3) the lawyer's association with his clients. And 4) his client's association with Hamas.

False accusations of guilt by association do not come much flimsier, I am afraid.

Finally, everyone has a right to a lawyer in this country and the lawyer cannot be held responsible for the behavior of his clients. To suggest that Romney is guilty of something here is nothing more than a transparent attempt at deflection from the actual issue.

Although I think that Reuven can do much better, his question also shows how much false reasoning can be economically embedded into so few words.

I would also think that someone like Reuven, a practicing Jew who genuinely cares about the well-being of the Jews of the Middle East, might actually do a better job of considering legitimate criticisms of this president when this president's behavior undermines the well-being of his fellow Jews in Israel.

Mike L.
I was thinking today about writing a piece on how the progressive-left sometimes slides into a type of authoritarianism that progressives claim to oppose when I remembered that I had already written such a piece for buhdydharma's blog, Docudharma, in early June of 2009.

If I were writing the piece below, today, I would focus less on certain trends and more on others. Specifically, I would focus more on the tactics that are used to silence oppositional speech such as deflection, defamation, demeaning the individual and bullying.

In any case, what was true in 2009 certainly remains just as true today.

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I want to take a moment to speak about a phenomenon that I have become concerned about since I started reading political websites: the emergence of something that I will call left-authoritarianism. There has always been a trend on the left, a trend quite distinct from what we typically call liberalism or progressivism, that has tended toward authoritarianism. This trend found its fullest and most unfortunate expression in the rise of the Soviet Union and in that country's betrayal of socialism early in the twentieth century. I am of the firm conviction that the viewpoints of people who think along these lines must be distinguished from those who hold liberal or progressive views.

So, what's the difference? The United States was founded as a liberal country. The principles of Enlightenment-Rationalism, principles of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and the idea that the authority of government derives from the consent of the governed, are at the core of what the Constitution stands for. Liberals, both of the classic 19th century variety, as well as current ones, still hold to these principles.

Left-Authoritarians, however, do not.

With the failure of the New Left, in the early 1970s, and with the rise of the Conservative Movement, from Reagan through the administration of George W. Bush, a certain number of liberals have slowly migrated from liberalism to authoritarianism in their reaction to the conservative movement and the policies of the previous, if not current, administration. Because of war, the "bundling" of corporate and political power, and Bush administration attacks on civil liberties, these individuals have responded in a manner that can be, and should be, characterized as authoritarian and therefore anti-liberal.

The individuals who make up this trend on the left do not believe either in freedom of speech, nor in democracy. Those who truly believe in freedom of speech are willing to listen to those who may disagree with them without making of those people "the enemy." Only authoritarians insist that anyone who disagrees with their views are some hideous other, some enemy to be opposed, rather than someone to be reasoned with. Those who truly believe in freedom of speech do not whine and cry that the presence of speech they oppose is evidence that they, themselves, are being silenced. Whatever else we might make of people who display this characteristic, they are not liberal because, in their opposition to freedom of speech, they cannot, by definition, be liberal.

Another tendency of the authoritarian-left is to denigrate electoral politics as a device designed to deceive the stupid masses, the sheeple, into believing that they live within a democracy. While it is obviously true that the US has, and has always had, huge problems with ballot tampering and other forms of election cheating, it is also true that the ballot is at the center of what it means to have a democracy. Those who believe that electoral politics is worthless are not reformers, nor liberals, nor progressives. They are putting forth an idea that undermines the Constitution, yet they usually seem to have no idea what in the world they would replace the Constitution with. They are "revolutionaries" with no plan, whatsoever, and no actual revolutionary ideology. For a revolution to happen there must be certain organizations in place devoted to fostering that revolution, such as unions or political parties. There must be a foundation, in other words, to promote the revolution. Without any such foundation, no revolution can take place. However, even if there was such a foundation, and even if the American people were in a revolutionary spirit, we still do not know what these people, these left-authoritarians, would replace the Constitution with? Whatever they would replace it with, it would not include elections because they oppose electoral politics, which they believe is a fraud.

The bottom line is this: if you oppose elections and you oppose freedom of speech, then you are something other than a liberal or a progressive. You may hold many policy views that liberals and progressives might agree with. A left-authoritarian may, for example, favor a woman's right to choose. A left-authoritarian may oppose the war in Iraq and favor universal health care coverage. Nonetheless, anyone who stands in opposition to the most fundamental principles upon which liberalism is based (freedom of speech and the ballot) cannot, in any meaningful way, be considered a liberal.

Finally, in case anyone thinks otherwise, this is not a condemnation of liberalism, in general. Hell, I am a liberal. It is simply a recognition that there is an element on the left, wittingly or not, that has moved beyond liberal values into something poisonous and anti-liberal.

I have not seen much of that here, thankfully, but it's definitely out there and we should be aware of it.

The Muslim Brotherhood is the foremost anti-Semitic organization in the world today. During the Morsi campaign they called for the conquest of Jerusalem. During World War II they supported the Nazis. Sayyid Qutb, one of their founding figures, wrote a pamphlet entitled “Our Struggle with the Jews.” They believe in an international caliphate in which sharia would reign throughout the world, thus making Jews, and other dhimmis, second- and third-class citizens; women the property of men; and gay people, quite frankly, dead. Yet, somehow, against all reason or common human decency, the American Jewish left supports the Muslim Brotherhood.

Barack Obama supports the Muslim Brotherhood and progressive-left American Jews support Obama; thus those Jews, whether they will admit it to themselves or not, and however they might otherwise justify it, support the Muslim Brotherhood. I find this situation to be absolutely unfathomable. How is it possible that after so many centuries of abuse throughout Europe and after 1,400 years of unjust violence and oppression against us in the Muslim Middle East, American Jews could possibly support an American president who helped usher the Muslim Brotherhood into power in Egypt? How is this possible? How is it possible that American Jews would support a president of the United States who referred to the rapes, and murders, and riots that collectively make up the misnamed “Arab Spring” as something akin to the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and, revoltingly enough, as something akin to the Revolutionary Spirit of 1776?

Denial plays a big role in this phenomenon, because if you were to ask your average American Jewish supporter of Barack Obama just why they are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood they probably would not know what the heck you were talking about. When explained to them that the Muslim Brotherhood is not only anti-Semitic, but even genocidal toward Jews, and that Barack Obama has supported their rise throughout the Muslim Middle East, particularly in Egypt, they would probably look at you as if you yammering at them in Swahili.

It’s pure denial. It is a willful turning away from very serious facts and a deadly serious situation for the Jews in Israel.

And if you do not think that Obama has actively supported the Muslim Brotherhood, how do you explain the fact that administration officials met with the Brotherhood on several occasions before they came into power in Egypt? How do you explain the fact that, over Mubarak’s objections, Obama invited the Brotherhood to his Cairo speech of 2009? How do you explain the fact that when Obama called for the deposing of Mubarak he knew that the Brotherhood would likely fill the power vacuum? How do you explain the fact that Hillary Clinton flew to Egypt to ensure the transition from military control of the country to Brotherhood control? However one slices and dices these facts, it is simply undeniable that Obama promoted the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East.

Another reason, aside from mere denial, is a suicidally naive faith in the wisdom of Barack Obama, in the good-will of Barack Obama, and in the intelligence of Barack Obama. After eight years of a militaristic and jingoistic Bush II administration, Obama seemed like a huge weight off the shoulders, a huge relief from all the hokum and trumpery, as Kurt Vonnegut might have put it, of the Bush years. Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review, after all. This is therefore a highly intelligent man. And, like us, and unlike Bush, he’s a liberal. And, on top of that, he’s a black man, and G-d bless America, racist as it allegedly remains, for finally raising up an African-American to the foremost political position in the land.

I mean, I voted for Barack Obama, and I couldn’t have been more pleased that we had elected our first black president. These things, taken together, can form quite an emotional attachment to the individual, which is particularly true when almost everyone you know keeps telling one another how the Democrats stand for human decency, social justice, and universal human rights, while the Republicans stand for racism, greed, misogyny, guns, and all things that are just plain wrong.

But there is yet another way in which “progressive” Jews justify their support for Obama, despite his support for the Muslim Brotherhood: democracy. That’s right: The Muslim Brotherhood is misogynistic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and anti-democratic, yet we must support Obama’s efforts to bolster the Brotherhood out of support for democracy! After all, democracy can be a messy business, so who are we to deny the legitimate national aspirations of the Egyptian people? Sure, those national aspirations may include the conquest of Jerusalem and the genocide of the Jews but, hey, that’s democracy.

This line of reasoning is just rampant on the Jewish left. I see it constantly on places like “Daily Kos” or “The Huffington Post” or the “Guardian.” They seem to think that supporting democracy is some sort of suicide pact, and that we are obligated to honor any choices made by any people anywhere so long as those choices are expressed via the voting booth. Well, excuse me, but didn’t a particularly nasty individual rise to power in Germany during the 1930s via democratic means? I think he did.

We should support democracy, but we are also allowed to take sides — and we are under no obligation to support any political party, much less the foremost anti-Semitic political party on the planet. What I think is that American Jews are making a truly awful mistake in supporting this presidency. I voted for the guy in 2008, but I also watched and learned. The main thing that I learned was that I was dead wrong to support Obama to begin with. No Jewish person should support a politician who supports the Brotherhood.

Progressive-left American Jews are holding two contradictory notions in their minds. They, for the most part, support the State of Israel, but they also support president Obama. Obama supports the Brotherhood and the Brotherhood tells us that they want to conquer Jerusalem.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

The Arab Lawyers Union on Friday awarded its highest decoration to the
Palestinian woman who carried out the 2003 suicide bombing at Maxim’s Restaurant
in Haifa, which killed 21 and wounded 51. The Cairo-based union, which
represents lawyers from 15 Arab countries, dispatched a delegation to the home
of suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat in Jenin to present her family with the
award.

Ayman Abu Eisheh, a member of the Palestine Committee at the ALU,
said the decision to honor the female suicide bomber was taken during a meeting
in Cairo last month. Abu Eisheh, a lawyer who visited the family, said the Arab
lawyers were proud of what Jaradat did “in defense of Palestine and the Arab
nation.”

Is it any wonder people like Pam Geller talk about "savages?" Lawyers?????? The lust for Jewish blood seems to be everywhere in their societies, not just limited to a few "extremists."

Father Roy writes: Palestinian farmers have every reason to be angry. And they express themselves as best they can. The highlights in the article pasted below are mine. Please read this article, too: A malignancy called Jewish settlers. Peace, Roy

Peace on you as well, Roy.

Attacks on trees by piss weak cowards in the night is as gutless and girly as a stuffed pink mammoth.

Tree Hacker Prize 2012

Whoever they are.

But these are trees.

What is it about Christians and olive trees?

We will come back to the trees but first a little perspective.

In the same period as the olive harvest hundreds of Syrians including many women and children and other innocents have been butchered in a cruel war that for some reason is morally problematic for these earnest Christian clerics to even mention. They are mute.

Their fixation is on the trees outside Jerusalem.

How far is it from Jerusalem to Damascus?

Any Christian cleric should be able to tell you that.

Approximate distance as the crow flies in miles from Jerusalem Israel to Damascus Syria is 134 miles or 215.61 Kilometers

Which that site obligingly informs us will take 2.2 hours by car. A long walk for sure especially at the wrong time of year.

In truth it is 99 light years. Einstein proved that even before he got a job in the Swiss patents office.

Artillery, tank and war plane attacks on civilians. Massacres. .Executions. Torture. Unspeakable atrocities committed on women and children in detention. Tens of thousands dead and injured and 100 000's forced from their homes.

How much of the cruel carnage can be seen from where once ran the ancient road from Jerusalem about 150 miles long? Especially the last fifty miles to Damascus from Quneitra then as now beyond the will and writ of Jerusalem.

We can not ignore the appalling moral spikes of these horrors from the Bronze Age and before, since before there was civilisation, since when barbarism ruled unchallenged by any light of man or God.

How can we and still call ourselves men and women?
Only Christian clerics it seems have that privilege.

Which brings us back to the trees.

Attacked once again at harvest time so mysteriously when all the pickers are in the groves by day and all the families around by night doing whatever people do with freshly harvested olives for two thousand years and more.

Somehow the Jews get around it all in the night and get at the trees unseen. Even on Shabbat. Even the Orthodox. .

It seems it is not only olives that are being harvested around Jerusalem right now. Right around pruning time.

They pick olives and harvest prunes into the bargain. Good business if you can get it.

This is another UN retailed slur pumped out by the PLO propaganda ministry for killer affairs and earnestly sucked up by the dumb, gullible and hateful everywhere.

It works so well with a certain kind of Christian who just want to believe this vile lying ranting rank antisemitism so much it hurts. You can see it their faces. They saw an open door and they kicked it off the hinges in the rush.

Antizionism is not antisemitism. Everyone knows that. What a relief and how exquisitely easy. It's all just a matter of words.

Read this filthy vile racist hatred written only for the purpose of incitement to war. . Brought to you by Father Roy and the Church of England.

By Khalid Amayreh

They murder in cold blood, steal in broad daylight and lie as often as they breathe the oxygen of life, all in the name of the Lord.

They descend on poor and helpless Palestinian olive harvesters in the vicinity of their colonies, beating the farmers, stealing their crops and destroying their orchards. And when the poor Palestinians try to put up a resistance, the heavily-armed thugs train their guns at them.

This is not the American Wild West. Welcome to the West Bank, where marauding Jewish settlers, who claim to be acting on instructions from God and that they are a light upon the rest of humanity, are tormenting Palestinian farmers day and night, seven days a week.

Even on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath or day of rest, the ostensibly religious but manifestly immoral settlers waste no time allowing the Palestinians a moment of respite....

That's the end of it for one month you would hope. Not a bit of it. There is also this:

October 11, 2012

Russell Tribunal on Palestine encounters media blackout

Father Roy writes:The mainstream media simply refused to cover the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. One is tempted to ask who owns the (deleted) mainstream media.Not to worry, Peers. Let’s thank God for the Internet. On the Internet there’s information at our fingertips. We network and exchange what we know. Attitudes influenced in Cyberspace create facts on the ground. The days of “Ignorance is Bliss” are over. “Let not your hearts be troubled, Peers.” We’ll figure out ways to right some wrongs. Cooperative efforts will be required, of course. But when we really and truly think about it, all we need to do … one individual at a time … is focus collectively and simultaneously on the issues that matter most to us and reach consensus. That’s all we need to do. Peace, Roy

Father Roy writes: The letter that Christian Leaders wrote to Congress recently (see below) is being ”criticized” by Jewish Groups. This is a serious matter. Spread the word. Christians need to be alerted. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs “rejected” what the Christian Leaders called for in the letter. The American Jewish Committee was OUTRAGED. But that’s not the worst of it. The Rabbinical Assembly called for a “re-evaluation” of the interfaith partnerships, between the assembly and the denominations represented in the letter. Is that a threat? Or a promise?Whichever, this incident needs publicity. We cannot let it fester. The highlights in JTA’s report are mine. Peace, Roy ...

Peace on you too Roy, again. The highlights in his gleeful account of the destruction of relations at all levels between his brand of Christians, and Jews and Jewry, are mine.

The feeling is exceedingly mutual at least in my case.. I know a creep and bigot I would rather not be in the same room when I see one.

Most people have stopped buying the lie this is about the "Palestinians" at all.. All honest people who have bothered to inform themselves have.These Christian clerics are preaching war propaganda for all the world to hear. They are preaching the oldest hatred from the pulpit again and for all the old reasons. It is shameful. They need to look into their souls. So does that the Church that supports them.

Moral Distinctions 101 Second SemesterThese are children who have been hacked around outside Damascus

The Fundamental Argument:

The progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, creates and supports venues that demonize and defame the Jewish state, thereby also creating hatred toward the Jewish people.

Such venues include political journals, such as, but not limited to, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and the UK Guardian, numerous universities throughout the United States and Europe, various NGOs with an anti-Israel agenda, and the entire progressive-left movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish people of the state of Israel.

These venues and organizations do not generally criticize Israel, but dehumanize that country.

For this reason, among others, the progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, undermines the well-being and safety of Jews around the world, sometimes resulting in violence toward us.

Therefore, as a matter of common sense and basic human decency, Jews should leave the progressive movement and the Democratic Party as we seek to build alternative political structures that are not home to toxic anti-Semitic anti-Zionists, who would see us robbed of self-determination and self-defense.

What You Can't Discuss:

This is a partial list of taboo topics within progressive-left venues around the Arab-Israel conflict. You cannot discuss this material because it undermines the "Palestinian narrative" of perpetual victimhood. This narrative is a club used by the Arab and Muslim enemies of Israel, along with their western progressive allies, to delegitimize that country in preparation for its eventual dissolution.

1) The centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism.

2) The recent construction of Palestinian identity, its connection to Soviet Cold War politics, and how this is an Arab people with a Roman name that refers to Greeks.

3) Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based racism as the fundamental source of the conflict.

4) The ways in which contemporary progressive anti-Zionism serves as a cloak for gross anti-Semitism.

5) The Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history.

6) "Pallywood."

7) The historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement.

8) The perpetual refusal of the Palestinian-Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.

9) The progressive portrayal of terrorists as those fighting a righteous war of "resistance."

10) The Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hatred.

11) Human rights violations against women, children, and Gay people in the Muslim Middle East.

12) The fact that violent Jihadis call themselves "Jihadis" and claim to love death above life.

This is only a partial list, so please let us know the many more that we are missing.

Barack Obama on the so-called "Arab Spring" (May 19, 2011):

"There are times in the course of history when the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat."

The "Arab Spring" is the rise of radical Islam in the Middle East and this is what Obama compares the Civil Rights Movement to? How's that for a kick in the head to Martin Luther King, Jr.?